Love Is a Journey in Personal Growth Love is as inexpressible as it is mysterious in its silence. To define, nevertheless, the complexities of the love experience Alto Carotenuto in his book, Eros and Pathos, Shades of Love and Suffering (Inner City Books), takes us into the lovers’ world and shows us how being in love can touch our souls. The love experience actually begins soon after birth, when we suddenly become aware we are separate. The significant other, usually the mother, represents all that we are not. From that moment we are forever on a quest to regain the original feeling of wholeness, of oneness. The painful awareness of being separate, alone, instills fears that become the foundation of all future intimate relationships. Dr. Carotenuto thus proposes that intimate relationships are based on the pathological needs of each partner. Love causes us to discover what we lack, and we attempt to satisfy these needs through our lover. Ever present in these unions is a conflict between good and evil. Love brings out our best and worst, yet at the same time it reveals us to ourselves. The unconscious comes to light. The love experience is like the big bang theory: Out of the chaos new life emerges. Romantic intimacy often begins with a seduction. Seduction is both an illusion and a weapon. It is a revenge of the psyche that begins at birth as we seduce our parents. Loneliness, isolation, abandonment, and betrayal are inner sufferings that also have their roots in our most formative moments when essential needs were not instantly met. From this beginning we become tragically aware of solitude as a basic human condition. The helpless, abandoned child emerges in any relationship. Abandonment, like death, cannot be avoided. When we reveal ourselves in the love experience, we abdicate our freedom both physically and psychologically. We risk self. We accept all. We recognize our inner world personified in the beloved. The image of the other actually originates in our ability to create forms and give them life. Love frees us to express our most hidden emotions, which are aspects of our shadow. The pain of love makes us aware that we are alive. As we move toward each other, we cause the erotic experience to become sacred and give life to the intensity of our sexuality and individuality. We suffer when the beloved is not near and can be driven to madness at the thought of losing the loved one. This fear causes anxiety which often leads to jealousy. It is not sexual infidelity which causes jealousy but the fear it represents, betrayal and abandonment. We reexperience the terror of the abandoned child. We must be vigilant in developing our individuality by facing alienation and anxiety. To be at the mercy of another teaches us that nothing can protect us anymore. Taking full responsibility for what we encounter throughout life, especially in matters of love, gives us strength to forge new dimensions. The fires of desire are lit by a void which spurs us to a search that produces personal growth. As we learn to judge external situations in light of what we know of ourselves, our interpretations of reality become based in our inner world. We realize nothing is caused by others. True security is to know ourselves. Love offers us the potential to stimulate our own growth processes by recognizing what it is we are searching for and by the final realization that all we really need can be found within. (Digest by Dolores Swett, Atlantic University) |